


For the Want of a Nail

by Tyellas



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Babies, Canon Compliant, Drama, Past Rape/Non-con, Politics, Post-Mad Max: Fury Road, families, mentions of Immortan Joe, mentions of Rictus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-30
Updated: 2017-05-30
Packaged: 2018-11-06 19:33:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11042847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tyellas/pseuds/Tyellas
Summary: Corpus decides it’s time to meet his new sibling: the Dag’s child.





	For the Want of a Nail

The Citadel’s Pumps team was waiting for Corpus’ final word. He turned his head to the team’s youngest members. “You pups would like to see the Dag’s baby, wouldn’t you? My new brother?”

There was a shrill, gleeful chorus of _yes! Yes!_

“Then you can all come with me when I go.”

Not that he’d been invited. But he’d decided: today was the day.

There were restive mutters from his older workers. Corpus breathed deep to project his voice. “The History Man’s on the road today. ‘Prospecting.’” Corpus flexed his arms to wiggle some air quotes around that. “Not a bad day for it, hmmm? Operations stable? Weather holding?”

There were nods and murmurs of “Yes, boss.” They said it still, despite the Citadel’s new order.

“Business as usual for the seniors, then. Do the rounds, pipes and cogworks. Check the War Tower's electrics. Update water and fuel logs. To come along...” Corpus eyed the team’s few apprentices. Publicly, he hemmed and hawed to the Citadel’s new Council about picking successors, putting on a show of reluctance, though he’d already decided. “Welds. And Rabbit.” Any trouble today brought would, in the long run, give him more influence with them.

Corpus missed his father, half-heartedly. When old Joe had been alive, he’d been able to take breaks from machinating like this and really work. He’d known Joe was living on borrowed time. Out of all the ways Joe’s death could have turned out, Corpus found himself in something close to his best-case scenario. Alive, with some status left, helping run the Citadel for one of his father’s successful Imperators. It was blind luck that this Imperator listened to the most sheltered, idealistic beings in the Wasteland: his father’s former Wives.

Corpus had been biding his time, waiting. For the Citadel to settle after his father’s death; for the Dag, his father’s last wife, to carry through on her pregnant promise; for the right moment. It had all come together this morning. He’d see how far he could push this new Citadel. 

His young entourage clustered around Corpus in his complex rolling chair. Nobody could accuse his group of sneaking. Ten excited Pups made as much noise as the Doof Warrior used to. Where Welds couldn’t keep Corpus’ chair level, or on stairs, twenty little hands helped. Together, they went through red stone corridors, up slanted passageways, out into the free air at the top of the Citadel. Corpus squinted as they progressed into the morning light, then peered around.

Everything was working at this moment, all his creations and designs. Windmills turned, bringing water up, irrigating plants, feeding thousands of people. Cog fodder treaded down below, cranking the gears that sent treadmills and elevators up and down, cars going across. By his metrics, attrition (for both plants and humans) was at an acceptable level. The air didn’t even burn his lungs, this morning. Corpus tucked his oxygen tube to one side and had Welds adjust the tank.  

It was good to keep the War Boy busy. Too busy for a word with the guards the new Council had posted here and there. Some of the guards glared: jumped-up Wretches or dubious Wastelanders. There hadn’t been many War Boys left, after his father’s last, spectacular, wasteful road war. This War Boy was what Corpus hoped for from the new generation of pups. Smart, handsome, a solid blackthumb, more of a three-quarter life – his idea of what a War Boy could be. Corpus understood why the Immortan had let the War Boys call him Daddy, but also never learned their names. If you got to know them like Corpus did as their teacher, let them be something close to family, and sent them out to die... you cooled down, after a while.

He missed his brother. Corpus had tried not to rely on Rictus’ massive strength too much, in case his brother got taken out at the same time as his father. Minding Rictus had been like looking after the biggest, most impulsive pup of all. Keeping a pup’s mind, he kept seeing Corpus the way they did, as their sometimes-funny, sometimes-stern older brother. Always as family.

He only had his own misshapen hide to worry about, now, and his own luck didn’t feel like fortune.

Engaging Welds burdened Rabbit with keeping the pups together and moving. There was no way the female Wretch could warn the Sisters he was coming. Good. Corpus understood why his father had held the Wretches at a distance, made them earn a place, though they were twisted as Corpus himself. Like this one, hiding post-nuclear misfortune behind a half-mask. She had been thrust on his team with the new order. Evasive, surely a spy, too clever. But she had her uses. It had been gratifying to learn from her that the Wretches had adored Rictus, as well the Immortan, as a god. And in the Citadel’s new order of Wives-renamed-Sisters and Mothers, putting a female forwards had advantages.

Now that they were in the Citadel’s gardens, this was one of those times. “You know where they are, Rabbit. Take us to them.” The women told each other everything.  The Wretch gave him a wide-eyed look, but nodded and led them on, slowly. It was so early that the plants around them still breathed out some freshness. Corpus made a show of pausing and examining some irrigation works. Green Thumbs, the Citadel’s gardeners, bowed their heads and let them by. They, too, had seen the Immortan as a god. It made sense to them that Corpus was on the way to their new goddess.

When they came to an incline barred by a low gate, the procession came to a halt. Corpus levered himself upright. At the top of this pathway was one of the Green Tower’s crests. The Dag had taken over the cave at its peak for her plant nursery – and her personal nursery, too. This gate being unguarded was one last, perfect fluke.

“We’ll go up. You first. Tell them we’re here to see my brother.” Corpus urged the pups to follow next, to go up front where they could see.

The gate wasn’t so unguarded after all. It clattered with crude bells. The sound called a tall, lithe figure down to meet them. Of all his father’s former Wives, Cheedo was a true daughter of the Citadel, raised in one of its gardens. Corpus never saw her without thinking how Rictus had been a fool for the girl. She’d smiled at Rictus once: that was all it had taken for one of Rictus’ obsessions to lock in. Cheedo's perfect mouth formed a perfect O of suprise as the Wretch said, “We are here to see the child of the Dag. Ith that ith okay.” Corpus flinched at the Wretch's lisp, wishing she'd left it at the first part.

Another figure caught up, strode past them both. The pups parted for her. She glared down at Corpus. “The child’s name is Angharad.” It was the Dag, all sharp angles yet despite surviving child-bearing.

“That’s fine. I’d like to see him. He’s my brother.” (Cheedo dashed past them all, down to the main Citadel. Corpus had, he guessed, a minute.)

The Dag’s glare sharpened. “Who told you it was a boy?”

“Nobody and everybody. You said it when you didn’t say it. If you’d had a daughter, we’d all know.”

For an instant, the Dag twisted herself with nerves, as she had at unguarded moments in the Vault: his father’s prisoner and breeder. Thirty years earlier, women like her remembered the world before. Those women had flung themselves at Joe Moore’s feet, grateful to be a Vault breeder, with refuge from the Wasteland and other men. The ones brought in at the end, feral apocalypse kids --

“You have a sibling because your father treated me like a _thing!_ ”

They said things like that.

Corpus took a deep breath and opened the vault of his own mind to the Dag.

“If my father counted me as one of his sons, there would never have been a Vault. Do you understand that?” His father had the idea of a perfect son, and none of them had been it. Not pup-minded Rictus. Not the destroyer Scrotus. Never him. Despite his work spinning out the cogs and the pipes and the planting and the cults, ensuring pups became War Boys smart and adoring enough to follow orders. No, never him.

The Dag didn’t get it. She was stiff with fury. “You – you filthy – you hide with your waterworks and your Pups like you used to hide behind Rictus!” As the Dag spat, she looked away from him, over and behind. The War Boy and the Wretch turned with her. Corpus waited.

Cheedo came back into his line of vision. She wasn’t alone. Clenched steel and leather at Corpus’ eye level told him Furiosa was with her. 

“Not making any trouble here,” Corpus said. “Just hoping to see my brother.”

Furiosa stepped beside him to look down, her unforgettable eyes hollow. “It’s up to them.”

The girls gasped, shocked that Furiosa hadn’t crushed his request.

Corpus wasn’t. He remembered the day, long past, when Furiosa had smiled at him.

He’d met her as a dimpled girl, swaying between sadness and anger in the Vault. Talking to her made him realize his father’s breeders were getting younger while Joe got older. Where she was from, they didn’t have a lot of mutants. She’d given him the time of day. Corpus had tried to cheer her up, get her to give the place a chance. And succeeded far more than he expected.

A few thousand days later, she was gone from the Vault. But Corpus had seen a new, etoliated War Boy and realized who _she_ had been. He’d called her over, talked to her until _she_ knew _he_ knew. He’d dismissed her with a half-smile: “Carry on, War Boy.” He’d thought, at the time, she’d learned some gratitude along the way, taking the place he’d let her keep. 

She’d gone on to become one of the essential lynchpins of the Citadel’s workings. A fearsome, charismatic fighter. Imperator Furiosa. The Bag of Nails! When Scrotus fell as a terror, she had seemed poised to take his place. Corpus had watched her with increasing wariness as the days rolled on, never sure how long he’d benefit from their understanding. When she’d stolen the Wives, the Citadel’s military machine fell apart within hours. _For the want of a nail, a kingdom was lost_.

Maybe he’d been a fool back then, remembering that a pretty girl had smiled at him once. Or maybe not. Because, today, Furiosa waited with him.

Cheedo broke the standoff. “Can we?”

The Dag’s wild, starry gaze turned from Furiosa, to Cheedo, to Furiosa again. (Not to him: never to him.) Finally, the Dag gritted, “Because she wants to.” With that, she legged it up the rise and through the round door at the top.

“Hear that, Pups? That means yes.” Corpus snapped his fingers twice. Instantly, the Pups lifted his chair and raced it up the incline. He winced at a hard jolt. Chances were that he’d descend and find out he’d broken yet another bone.

By the time the others caught up, the Dag had reappeared. She had an infant on her hip. At four months, the pup was already big, burdening the skinny woman. The Dag’s eyes scoured them all with a special glare for Furiosa. She thrust the pup at Cheedo. “You show him.”

The pup was blocky enough that Cheedo swayed as she took the child’s weight. Corpus found himself reacting at the same time as the Dag.

“Hold his head – ”

“Hold my baby’s head – ”

This done, Cheedo took the few steps over, and knelt to bring the baby level with Corpus.

“Hey, little guy. Hey.” The baby gurgled happily and reached out with both hands.

As the baby's clumsy flail brushed him, Corpus felt time stop. This was what he’d missed. He hadn’t known how hollow and cold he’d been without it. Family. Every line of this child read like family. Blue eyes, broad cheeks, decisive chin, shining clear and true. This was the new one. His father’s heir, and his heir, too. All his share of history, heritage, accomplishment – his Citadel – was concentrated in Cheedo’s arms. Joe-damn it. “Hey! Strong little guy.” The Pups clustered around, murmuring, shielding.

“Bring Angharad back now,” the Dag ordered. Cheedo whisked the baby away instantly, Pups trailing after her.

“I wanted to see him...at least once. Maybe again, sometime?” Corpus said it to Furiosa.

“It’s up to them,” Furiosa repeated. Her right hand was curled to a half-fist. Her left hand, hard metal, creaked with tension. Furiosa had seen what Corpus had, with his face close to the baby’s: his father in younger days.  It was her time to turn away and keep her quiet.

Corpus nodded at the turn of her hip. She, too, understood this Citadel. It needed someone to get the wheels turning. It needed a feared warlord defending its refuge against the dry, broken Wasteland. And it needed what his father’s freed Wives tried to deny, even as they fulfilled it: someone to adore as a force of life, somebody to die for. Immortan Joe had tried to be all of that at once. Corpus looked at the two girls, bracing themselves together around the baby. For that child’s sake, he’d help hold the machine of the Citadel together: for their child’s future, the Sisters would listen to him, tolerate.

“Thanks,” Corpus repeated. “Dag. I’ll have my crew scout again for some arable ground for you. See if we can’t find somewhere worth planting.”

His reward for promising this fool’s errand was a curt nod from her.

“Ask first next time!” Cheedo blurted.

“Next time. I will.”  Corpus lifted a hand. “Say thank you, Pups.”

“Thank you!” they chorused. Furiosa strode up, placing herself between the girls, the baby, and Corpus. This audience was definitely over. He gestured to the War Boy to get him moving.

Corpus swayed as his procession rattled off, as irregularly as they’d arrived. Going downhill, Welds had his hands full keeping Corpus steady. Sweat had washed his War Boy white off the sides of his chest. The Wretch, blanched beneath her half-mask, was working on breathing. The pups were running wild. Corpus decided he could let it all be, for five minutes.

He snapped his fingers. “Pups! Did you like that?”

“Yes, Corpus!” “Thank you, Corpus!”

He watched them dart around in the sun, amongst the green, the way he never had.  

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to the ever-excellent [Splinter](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Splinter/profile) for beta reading!
> 
> Corpus is making assumptions about the Dag's child - as can be seen from this related short, [The choice](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4591761/chapters/24437424).


End file.
